The present invention relates to techniques for improving the tamper-resistibility of hardware, especially, to a radio assisted method for resisting and detecting tampering in a HSM device.
A Hardware Security Module (HSM) refers to a piece of hardware and associated software/firmware that may be attached to the inside of a PC or server and provides at least the minimum of cryptographic functions. HSM devices act as trust anchors that protect the cryptographic infrastructures by securely managing, processing and storing cryptographic keys on the physical device itself.
HSM devices with tamper protection mechanism integrated at least one sensor in order to detect any kind of penetration or tampering. Most of these physical sensors can be tricked or bypassed when enough time can be spent for an attempt. The content of an HSM device is thus potentially endangered when physically removed from its originated system.
Therefore, there is a need to improve the means for detecting the physical tampering of the HSM devices, such as by means of physical penetration.